


Keeping it Weird

by Miri1984



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Guardian Angel Grizzop, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-07
Updated: 2020-01-07
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:36:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,587
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22152640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miri1984/pseuds/Miri1984
Summary: When Zolf is away, Oscar falls back on bad habits.
Relationships: Grizzop drik Acht Amsterdam/Oscar Wilde, Zolf Smith/Grizzop drik Acht Amsterdam/Oscar Wilde, Zolf Smith/Oscar Wilde
Comments: 15
Kudos: 97





	Keeping it Weird

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Flammenkobold](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flammenkobold/gifts).



Zolf felt a familiar tingle at the back of his mind as he walked through the town, packages clutched in his hands and he let out a whuff of irritation, turning into a street slightly less busy than the main shopping strip.

“What is it?” he asked, under his breath, knowing that he would be heard.

“He’s doing it again.” 

Zolf learned very early on in their relationship that Grizzop’s voice had a limited range of expressions. There was fast and irritated - that one was common. Fast and worried, also pretty common, given his specific task in this realm since the beginning of the end of the world. Absolutely pants wettingly furious, which he’d only heard a couple of times and actually quite enjoyed - also fast.

And then there was slow. Which didn’t happen. Or at least, hadn’t yet, for Zolf. Grizzop only ever took that tone with Wilde, who apparently deserved more in the way of tenderness and care than Zolf did, at least when it came to badgering him to look after himself as well as the rest of the damned world. 

Not that Zolf minded. He didn’t need to be handled with kid gloves the way Wilde did. He hadn’t been pampered and pandered to his entire life, handed things on silver platters, talked about in society rooms by day and cushioned by soft beds and softer companions at night...

“How long has it been?” Zolf murmured.

“Four days,” Grizzop replied. “You know I can’t work magic from this plane. You’ll have to get back there and force him to sleep before he kills himself.”

“He’s gone longer than that before.”

“And then he passed out bleeding from the eyes and nose!”

Zolf sighed again. It was a good half a day back to the inn and he still had chores to do here and really what could he do to convince Oscar Wilde to go to sleep, if Grizzop hadn’t managed to bully him into it the way he normally did?

“You’re better at this than me.”

“Yeah, I am,” Grizzop also did not suffer from an abundance of humility. “But I don’t have a body, do I? I’ve been dead for more than a thousand years and I could literally be in heaven right now but instead I’m here trying to get a stubborn dwarf to look after his stubborn human so the world doesn’t end. Funny how things work out, innit?”

A smile tugged at the corners of Zolf’s mouth. Grizzop could always do that, too. Make Zolf smile. It was a trait he shared with Oscar.

“You don’t want to be anywhere but here,” he said, and it came out fonder than he meant it to. 

“I’ve got a _ job _ to do,” Grizzop said, a slight edge of defensiveness in his tone.

“Fine,” he said. “I have a plan.”

#

He didn’t go back immediately, something that caused the presence of Grizzop, still hovering over him, to vibrate with irritation. But if Grizzop’s methods hadn’t succeeded he knew he would have to get a little bit more creative in order to solve this particular problem. He had other tools at hand. Tools that he very much doubted the goblin had ever had time to acquire in his too short life.

He had no idea how time moved on the astral plane, but from the way Wilde talked about Grizzop, the goblin hadn’t changed at all in the thousand years since his ill-advised trip to Rome. There was probably some deep philosophical reason behind it, something to do with gods and mortals and the necessity of living a mortal life, but Zolf had long since stopped giving a fuck about all that, and so he pushed those thoughts aside as he did his shopping.

Supplies on the island were tight, as they were across the whole of Japan, but Zolf knew a few special places he could find key ingredients. With the aid of a potion, he bypassed the language barrier that usually hindered him on these trips and purchased some particular ingredients, and made his way back to the inn.

Wilde looked fine. Of course he did. More than. His hair had almost completely grown back to how it was before Damascus, now, and although he had eschewed the flamboyant suits and socks that had characterised him in London and Paris he still managed to pull off the loose, wrap around shirt and pants that they favoured here better than Zolf had ever managed. 

“You’re back early,” Wilde said, looking up from his desk, strewn with reports and missives from Carter and Barnes and Curie and their other agents. Work that always needed doing, that never slowed down enough for him to catch up, that robbed them both of sleep and peace.

“Grizzop fetched me,” Zolf said.

The skin around Wilde’s eyes tightened and he pressed his lips together. 

“What did you expect I’d do?” Grizzop’s voice drifted between them.

“I expected you to know that the mission comes first.”

“It doesn’t,” Grizzop said. “Not for me. I have one job and that’s to look after you. And if I don’t look after you, I do the next best thing, which is get  _ him _ to look after you.”

Wilde looked up at Zolf, who crossed his arms over his chest. “Fine,” he said. “I suppose you’re going to order me to bed then?”

“Actually, no,” Zolf said. “First I’m going to feed you.”

#

“How is this helping?” Grizzop said. Zolf had never actually seen Grizzop in the flesh, but Wilde had once created an illusionary approximation of him for Zolf and he had met a few (a very few) goblins in his time, so he had no difficulty imagining him these days, especially when his voice was so damned expressive.

Zolf handed Wilde another potato to peel. “The comfort of an every day task,” he said, checking the water that was close to boiling. “The routine of it. It helps calm the mind. Smartarse here,” he bumped his hip against Wilde’s, who made a pained sound of protest “can’t turn his brain off to sleep, so we give it something boring and repetitive to do to smooth out the kinks…”

“It would take more than peeling potatoes to…” Wilde started.

“To  _ smooth out the kinks _ and reset it to a point where sleep is an option.”

Wilde grumbled and reached for another potato.

“Seems like a waste of time.”

“Proper nutrition is also important,” Zolf said, mildly. 

“Where did you get the potatoes?” Wilde asked, softly.

Zolf glanced up at him and smiled. “I have my sources.”

#

They ate, irish stew with mashed potatoes made the way Zolf knew Wilde loved - more butter and salt than was strictly healthy, but smooth and creamy and filling. Grizzop had left them to it in a huff, muttering about it being a waste of time, but when Wilde leaned back in his chair, sipping from a glass of their dwindling supply of brandy, Zolf could see the lines of tension in his shoulders and the tightness around his eyes had lessened.

“Now are you going to order me to bed?”

Zolf smiled. “You need a little bit of time to digest.”

“I’m tired  _ now.” _

“Not tired enough.”

#

Grizzop gave the two of them privacy for certain things, lacking in a physical form as he was. Zolf had thought that he would care about that more than he did, knowing the full extent of both Wilde and Grizzop’s feelings, but the two of them had always been better at defining their relationship than Zolf and in the end it was only peripherally his business. It didn’t stop him from easing Wilde into their shared bed, softly ordering him to stay awake while Zolf did his best to exhaust the man physically as much as he was mentally. When they’d finished, Zolf was feeling sleepy and content, and Wilde was softly snoring into his pillow, one arm carelessly slung over Zolf’s chest, the other dangling over the edge of the bed.

“You could have just told him to sleep,” Grizzop said, and his voice was slower than usual. Softer. “Or knocked him out.”

“He’s very resistant to sleep spells,” Zolf said. “Too damned stubborn. And any way, it wasn’t just about that.”

He shifted slightly and reached out to brush hair away from Oscar’s cheek.

“Really?”

“He wanted us to make a fuss of him,” Zolf said. “Wanted to feel special. Wanted to feel like…”

“Like what?”

“He wanted to feel like he’s worth it.”

Grizzop snorted. “That’s  _ stupid. _ He knows how you feel. How we  _ both _ feel.”

“Of course he does. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t want it demonstrated in other ways, sometimes.”

There was a long silence. Zolf tried to imagine what it might be like, for there to be another body in the bed with them, a tiny ball of fury and sinew. Wondered if Grizzop had been as bad as Wilde at sleeping. He couldn’t picture the Grizzop he knew even contemplating lying down. Not when there was work to be done.

He could feel the goblin’s presence, reassuring and dear, hovering near them. Thinking. Procesing. Finally, softly, slowly, with a tone of voice he’d never expected to hear directed his way, Grizzop spoke.

“You’re really weird, Zolf.”

Zolf smiled into the darkness, a small ball of warmth settling in his chest. It felt right there, despite the world falling apart around them. “Yeah, Grizzop,” he said. “But then again, so are you.”


End file.
